Will Connecticut See a Second Maximum Security Facility for Girls?

Each year, 1.4 million of the nation’s eleven- to 17-year-olds enter the juvenile justice system. Of these boys and girls, some 71,000 are sent to incarceration facilities, where they may remain for several months in seclusion from the outside world.

In Connecticut, decreased reliance on group homes, and the closure of several residential treatment programs, has placed more and more youths in these locked facilities. As a result, the number of incarcerated boys is the highest it has been in ten years. Overcrowding at Journey House, currently the state’s only incarceration facility for girls, has prompted the Department of Children and Families to pursue opening a second girls’ facility.

The proposed multi-million dollar project would open 12 beds to juvenile justice involved girls. And it has left many wondering: Is this the best way to address problems within the state’s incarceration program?

Our panel of guests weigh in on the DCF proposal, and Yale’s Timothy Snyder gives us an update on the political climate in Ukraine.

Governor Malloy’s latest early childhood education proposal centers on universal access to pre-kindergarten. The phase-in plan would offer seats to 1,000 three- and four-year-olds for fiscal year 2015, and would expand to serve 4,000 additional children by 2019.

Jean Leising admits she's no expert on brain development, but she still hopes to do something about the way kids learn.

Leising serves in the Indiana state Senate. Last month, she convinced her Senate colleagues to pass a bill that would restore instruction of cursive writing to the state's educational standards — the set of skills and knowledge kids are expected to master in each grade level.

Even in the email age, teaching cursive might be a great thing. But when legislatures impose mandates on instruction, professional educators get nervous.